A Final Visit With Prince: Rolling Stone’s Lost Cover Story
Before Prince sits for an interview, there is another test. I sit and chat with the members of 3rdEyeGirl in a cavernous atrium, where the black carpet is decorated with Prince’s old symbol and the words “NPG Music Club,” and the motorcycle from Purple Rain is on display above. We gather on a purple couch that is noticeably frayed, and they explain their unlikely origins. The bassist, taciturn Denmark native Ida Nielsen, arrived first, joining Prince’s bigger funk band, the latest incarnation of the New Power Generation, which he’s still gigging with as well. Prince tells me how she beat out an old bandmate of his who re-auditioned: “She was eight times better than him, and she was new.”
Prince specifically wanted a female band, seeking out members via YouTube – back in 2010, he had discovered Nielsen on MySpace. “We’re in the feminine aspect now,” he says. “That’s where society is. You’re gonna get a woman president soon. Men have gone as far as they can, right? … I learn from women a lot quicker than I do from men. … At a certain point, you’re supposed to know what it means to be a man, but now what do you know about what it means to be a woman? Do you know how to listen? Most men don’t know how to listen.”
I ask 3rdEyeGirl’s guitarist, Donna Grantis, who has a half-shaved head and Hendrixian chops, about her influences. “Prince,” she says, flatly. Her husband, a pleasant rocker dude named Trevor Guy, came along with her and ended up working closely with Prince, serving some managerial functions. (Prince believes artists shouldn’t have managers: “You should be a grown man, be able to man-age yourself.”) Josh, Welton’s husband, an R&B-singer-turned-producer, also became part of the Paisley family, working on some of Prince’s final albums. They’ve all been living in a nearby hotel for a year and a half, spending at least six days a week in Paisley Park. They come off as members of a benign cult. “It’s sort of like an alternate reality,” says Grantis. “It’s an alternate universe being here, because we’re in this awesome bubble of, like, making music all day. I have no idea what the date is or what day it is.”